DON’T ROCK THE CHAIR
Olya Dzugaeva-Bespredelova

Flor et Lavr Gallery presents North Ossetia artist Olya Bespredelova's debut exhibition Don’t Rock The Chair.

“This exhibition is about the importance of the moment when you clearly hear your inner voice and open a new, unexpected and honest dialogue with yourself. Today it is hardly possible to engage in self-knowledge and come to a harmonious state in society. Only in a state of loneliness can a person achieve enlightenment. Even if there are several heroes in the artist's paintings, they are deliberately not together, they are alone. Olya's works are distinguished by the depth of images and their incredible emotionality. They are about finding oneself, an uncomfortable, partly painful process - depicting figures, the artist sees them in bent and broken poses, as if at the highest point of tension. A bright and complex color palette only enhances this feeling,” says curator of the exhibition Frol Burimskiy.

Don’t Rock The Chair is a manifesto of a person who is free from conventions. It is not about discovering new truths and rules. Rather, it glorifies the liberation of consciousness from outdated norms by going beyond one's own boundaries. This is an unconscious and spontaneous feeling of limitless possibilities, a feeling that arises at the moment of an unplanned "fall from a chair." Indeed, often a person cannot afford such freedom, constantly making a forced, but not always conscious choice.

The works of Bespredelova are characterized by a peculiar perception of reality through the prism of emotions and their expression through body language. Male and female figures are depicted in different poses, sometimes swinging on a chair, sometimes with their legs entwined and arms raised. Sometimes the postures are so unnatural that they serve as a metaphor for inner brokenness. These states sometimes remind of the aesthetics of post-impressionism, for example, the graphics of Egon Schiele. The artist herself explains that the differences are due only to the fact that she understands the female body and its plastic better. Female figures break, bend, and male ones turn out to be more "collected.” However, this does not mean the defenselessness of the women depicted. With their gaze, in which vulnerability and strength simultaneously echo, they control the gaze of the beholder.

On the contrary, the artist expresses the state of loneliness through a single piece of clothing in her works, or rather, an accessory - a stylized ruffled raff collar. At the end of the 16th century in Spain, it signified belonging to the high class, making the carrier isolated and impregnable. The rigidity of the raff limited the movements of its owner. What was considered a symbol of power and status made a person helpless and literally in need of other people.

Bright large sheets, made with responsive dry pastels, or laconic graphics in different techniques. Working without sketches, alla prima, Olya reserves complete freedom of expression. Often, mysterious faces and significant figures are self-portraits.

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